As an avowed atheist living among a sea of believers (both locally and on the Internet), I have spent a lot of time discussing my beliefs (or lack thereof, as the case may be). The purpose of this blog is not to prove the non-existence of God or "de-convert" anybody from their faith, but simply to preserve some of these discussions and allow me to flesh them out through the process of writing them down, as well as to share them with anybody who might be interested in reading them.

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Atheism and Evolution

As
evidenced by probably half of the questions posed to atheists in various public forums, many theists seem to think that atheism and the theory of
evolution (or “Darwinism” for those who want to imply that evolution is
just some sort of cult of personality that atheists belong to based
solely on faith) are inextricably linked. Apparently, either all
atheists believe in evolution as their religion instead of believing in
God, or else a belief in evolution is what caused people to become
atheists in the first place.

In this post I
want to try and unpack this a bit. First, to explain what atheism really
means and what the real relationship between atheism and evolution is.
And second, to try and understand why theists keep insisting on a
relationship that isn’t there.

First, the facts:

Atheism
is neither a belief system nor a community of like-minded individuals.
There is no official atheist doctrine, there are no appointed atheist
leaders, and there are no requirements to be an atheist other than
simply not believing in God. Or gods.

Yes, many atheists
accept the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, but not all do and
you can certainly be an atheist and not accept it. Just like you can be
an atheist and think the world is flat or that aliens are regularly
abducting people or that world leaders are being replaced with lizard
people. Being an atheist is not the same as being a scientist or a
rationalist or a materialist — it simply means that you do not believe
in God. Or gods.

And, while many atheists do accept the Theory
of Evolution by Natural Selection, they do so for the same reason they
accept, say, the theory of gravity. It’s a coherent, well-established
theory that explains observed phenomena that has been supported by
observable evidence and is backed up by numerous other fields of study.
And, keep in mind, the “theory” of evolution is the current best
explanation for the observed fact of evolution, just like the “theory”
of gravity is the current best explanation for the the observed fact of
gravity.

It’s important to note that many theists also accept the theory of evolution for the same reasons many atheists do. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that most
theists accept it (although some still want to include God as the
ultimate driving force behind it). The whole denial of evolution thing
is really just limited to a very small number of Christians and Muslims
world-wide who take their scriptures extremely literally and feel
threatened by anything that could be seen to contradict those scriptures
in any way (more on this later).

Finally, while it’s certainly possible that some atheists lost their faith after learning the details of the theory of evolution (e.g.,
because their faith was based on an assumption that God was required as
an explanation for why life on earth is the way it is), the vast
majority of atheists were not looking for an explanation regarding the
diversity of life on earth in the first place and didn’t choose to
replace their religious beliefs with the “religion” of evolution. They
simply lack a belief in God, whether because they were not raised to
believe in God in the first place, because they were taught about God
and found the notion to be rather silly, because they carefully
considered the evidence for God’s existence and found it lacking, or any
of a thousand other reasons.

Second, the theories:

As
stated above, many (if not most) theists in the world have no trouble
accepting the fact that all species — including man — have evolved over
long periods of time to reach their current state. They do not take
their scriptures to be 100% literally true and are fine with that,
focusing instead on the principles and promises made in those
scriptures. A small subset of theists, however, acknowledge the
hypocrisy involved in only believing in part of holy scriptures
and therefore take an “all or nothing” approach. And, since the holy
scriptures clearly state that God created man in His own image and gave
him dominion over all other creatures on earth, acknowledging the fact
of evolution (and accepting the validity of the current theory of
evolution by natural selection) would be to deny the validity of the
scriptures and the very foundation of their faith.

These theists
who take their scriptures literally know full well that most of what is
written in those scriptures either cannot be verified by modern science
or is directly contradicted by modern science, whether it be
archaeology, geology, cosmology, anthropology, physics, chemistry,
biology, or what have you. But the whole concept of evolution in
particular bothers them, since it undermines the whole idea of humans
being uniquely special creatures in God’s eyes. OK, so maybe the world
wasn’t really created 6000 years ago and maybe Noah didn’t really have an ark full of animals and maybe Moses didn’t really part the Red Sea, but we sure as heck didn’t come from monkeys!

As
a result, for those theists who take their scriptures literally and
whose world view revolves around the notion that humans are special, it
is only natural to assume that everybody else’s world view revolves
around the fundamental question of how humanity got here and what is
humanity’s relationship with the rest of the universe. Thus, since their worldview revolves around “God did it,” atheists must have
a worldview that revolves around “God didn’t do it.” And, since a
belief that “god didn’t do it” requires some alternate explanation, that
explanation must be “Evolution”.

So, in the eyes of these theists, it is incomprehensible that somebody could simply not believe in God (especially their
God) without having an alternative belief system in place. And, since
these theists acknowledge (whether explicitly or implicitly) that their
belief system is fundamentally based on faith (belief without evidence or in spite of evidence to the contrary) and a reliance on the testimony (anecdotal stories) of others, they assume that atheist must also base their belief system on faith and testimony.

This
false equivalence leads to two separate phenomena. First, there is an
ongoing attempt to argue that atheism is no better than theism since
both “isms” are equally reliant on “faith” and “testimony” and therefore
atheists have no right to feel at all superior to theists (and theists
are perfectly justified for not feeling at all inferior). Second, there
is an ongoing attempt to undermine the theory of evolution in the
mistaken belief that doing so will somehow convince atheists that the
explanation for how humanity got here must actually be “God did it”
after all.

For more of my musings on the subject of evolution and religion, please see the following: